Share this story

Further Reading

Leaving Apple's iMessage service hasn't always been easy. If you were switching from iOS to another ecosystem, having a phone number registered in iMessage could result in iPhone-using friends sending you iMessages that your new phone would never get, and the deregistration process was hardly foolproof.

Yesterday, Apple posted a new support page to help people disentangle their phone numbers from iMessage. If you've still got your iPhone, Apple encourages you to put your SIM back in and turn off iMessage in the Settings. If you no longer have your phone (or if that solution doesn't work properly), you can put in your phone number and then a six-digit confirmation code sent to that number via SMS.

The new page could save switchers a call to Apple support, which used to be the last step to take if you were having problems opting out of iMessage. Once deregistered, your friends' iPhones should automatically begin sending your new phone SMS messages instead of shooting iMessages off into the ether.

Share this story

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew wrote and edited tech news and reviews at Ars Technica from 2012 to 2017, where he still occasionally freelances; he is currently a lead editor at Wirecutter. He also records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites